Linked Together
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
The Entanglement of Day-to-Day Fundraising: The Perspective of Local NGOs in Jordan's Development Assistance Sector View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexandrine Dupras
In 2016, international organizations, states and donors gathered to the World Humanitarian Summit to pledge for the 'Grand Bargain' which pushed for the 'local' to be placed at the center of aid interventions, namely local NGOs. In the context of continuous criticisms over the effectiveness of aid actors and the development sector, the push for a 'localization of aid' is based on the argument that “in-country responders are better placed to design and implement effective programs than their international counterparts”. In the development sector, the 'usual suspect', the 'go-to' actor at the country level is the non-governmental organization (NGO) which is – rightfully or not – favored over states for being perceived as more cost-efficient, less corrupted, and more connected with the targeted population. On the one hand, local NGOs are key actors without which development assistance could not take place, but on the other hand, they consistently evolve in an unstable fashion. Local NGOs rely heavily on foreign funds to operate and such funding imply a series of accountability mechanisms donors impose to control the funds are spent according to their policies and standards. Several studies have shown how these control mechanisms impact the daily work of the local NGOs. By looking at daily practices of two local NGOs through an ethnographic approach in Jordan, this research mobilizes sociology of organizations' conceptual approaches to shed light on the dynamics among actors through financing systems and artefacts, questioning the preconceived subordination of local NGOs to international organizations and donors.
The New Geography of Surveillance: Social Media, the Internet, and Digital Power View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Humphreys
The term surveillance denotes monitoring in order to gather data and information on the behaviours and activities of targeted individuals and groups. However, in today’s digitally-connected world surveillance is no longer the exclusive domain of those with power and advanced technology. Members of the public now regularly upload photographic and audio-visual images and make them available to online audiences. And today individuals are under surveillance as never before through ownership of mobile phones and laptops, leading to what Shoshana Zuboff refers to as 'surveillance capitalism', a new economic order that appropriates and archives human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction and sales. Data has value both because of its predictive power and because it can shape the behaviours of individuals; what they will purchase and how they will vote. This research examines some of the new geographies of surveillance that have emerged through data collection and algorithmic analysis. The case studies presented include the influence on voters in the United Kingdom and the United States and the work of the citizens' group Bellingcat. The paper considers the ramifications of the Internet for personal privacy and examines the asymmetry of power between citizens and the Internet tech giants. The Internet companies and others who gather data know plenty about us, which gives them the power to influence our behaviour, but we know nothing on how this data is gathered and used.
